A Blast from the Past

[Graham Ritchie]

I was having a further clean out in the garage the other day when I came across some old paperwork of the 146. I remember when I worked for Ansett how we were all in a learning curve doing the major work on those aircraft. One such job was fitting the flaps, the four of us given the task had never done this before. Fitting the flaps required a forklift with a sling to lift them into place. None of us had any company approval to drive the forlift, so I got into the cab tried things out as to what did what and said lets do it ...so very very carefully we did, and in a couple of hours had the job done.

Now jump forward to the magic of you-tube I came across this video of a 146 Prague to Brussels and watched with interest the flaps retract Its funny how things come flooding back to you from a time so long ago.

[Graham Ritchie]

It took a while in the above video for the flaps to retract, but for me it was fun watching it

This one of Aussie and NZ approach to Queenstown is really good. I like the music as well. The last time I worked on a 146, was just after they closed the base engineering, making everyone redundant, myself included I later got a call from the manager, saying would I like to come back for one final aircraft, I replied you just made me redundant, his reply was "the goal post have changed", my reply.... see you on Monday

I spent about four to six weeks all up, doing major work in the cockpit area with the radio going, well you have to have some music Ansett were a good company to work for, but shortly after my departure, the place went under big time owing millions. I still have my Mt Cook overalls, my Ansett overalls, my Air New Zealand overalls, but none of them seem to fit anymore,.... they seem to have shrunk